The Maltese Council of Disabled Persons yesterday criticised a Labour proposal to restructure part of St Luke's Hospital to house disabled people who do not have anyone to take care of them.
The council expressed concern saying it strongly believes that strengthening services in the community should be the way forward and that the proposed move could be tantamount to institutionalisation.
In a strong-worded statement, the council said the proposal -expected to be discussed during the MLP's extraordinary general meeting tomorrow and Friday - could signify a regression in what disabled people have achieved through anti-discriminatory legislation and policies aimed at protecting their rights.
When contacted, council president Gordon Cardona said the immediate risk was that people with a disability would lose what they had managed to acquire over the past years. This could, in turn, lead to a rise in stigma against disabled people.
"Having centralised services would be taking a leap backwards. The way ahead is to have services for disabled people in the community," Mr Cardona said, adding that problems could not be solved through centralisation of services.
Council secretary Vickie Gauci pointed out that the way forward has been to move away from institutionalisation and towards services within the community. She said the setting up of Aġenzija Sapport was mainly geared to help people with a disability continue living within the community.
The council argued that the proposed measure was based on a medical model of disabled people "which has historically resulted in the systematic exclusion of people with impairments in Malta's past and is a daily reality for other disabled people around the world".
The council said it recognised that the measure might have been proposed with good intent but it "firmly opposes the establishment of more institutions, which only serve to exclude us from the community".
Moreover, the council said, the measure risks undermining the rights to equal citizenship of people with a disability set out by the Equal Opportunities Act.
When contacted, the chairman of the National Commission for Persons with a Disability (KNDP), Joe Camilleri said the commission would be issuing a reaction later on. However, on a personal level he was preoccupied. "The way forward is community care," he said.
The Labour spokesman on social solidarity, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, said, when contacted, that the council had been hasty in issuing its comments since it did not know exactly what the proposal entailed. She asked whether places like Dar Tal-Providenza should be closed down.
The proposal, she added, was to convert the space into small units but it did not mean that other proposals, like supported living, would be eliminated. The proposal did not boil down to centralisation of services as this was one of a number of initiatives. Those that were working would be further strengthened.
She said a distinction needed to be made between different levels of disability and the proposal stemmed from parents' concerns about what would happen to their children when they were unable to look after them.
The proposal had been discussed with the, KNPD she added.